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La Alma de Fuego had a blog series end of 07, beginning of 08, called Radical Women of Color Theorists, you might want to check out.

So, Alex Sanchez does not write speculative fiction. (Just to be, you know, clear.)

He writes about teenage boys (and their friends and families) coming to terms with their sexuality. They're YA books, fairly didactic, and the questioning characters can sometimes come off as a bit dim, since they're a little bit nelly and their close friends have already guessed that they just might be gay already.

His books have Mexican-American main characters. Their ethnic origins are part of the characters, but they are not Issues, like the sexuality is an Issue. (Even in his latest book, the God Box, where the main character has assimilation issues, they're still lower-case i issues; they're part of the narrative but they're like, C plot, mostly used to illustrate his growing self-acceptance.)

Part of why I wanted to post about these books is because people were asking about books by authors of color, and partly because 50books_poc doesn't work for me.

For me, the struggle to get authors of color published is not the same as the one to get books that depict communities of color in a non-trivializing, non-enraging way. And I don't actually think I can do much, if anything, on the getting them published back end.

And having an author of color doesn't make the book one that advances my chromatic realities agenda. Kazuo Ishiguro's Japan is about as authentic as the one in the Last Samurai, and he's chosen to write very little about being East Asian in England. I'm not condemning him for not writing about being East Asian in England (I do give him the stinkeye for writing about imaginary Japan.) But he's not doing much for me in terms of creating a publishing world where authentic stories about people of color are seen as potentially profitable.

Tony HIllerman, on the other hand, wrote eighteen mystery novels set in Navajo country, some of which were filmed, and which led a whole bunch of people who might not have thought much about American Indians but who liked murder mysteries to think about Navajo people as people, and he did it while he was white.

On the third hand, I read this anthology Creepin' because it promised to be African-American urban fantasy. And it was, but I can't recommend the book because three out of five stories had a completely unsubtle homophobia in them. And the thing is, if it had been one story, or even if one of the other two stories had included a happy gay or lesbian character, I might have wanted to tell you about it with caveats. But there wasn't any such relief for me in the book, so, I am here to tell you: don't buy Creepin', even though it does fit into the chromatic realities agenda.

But the thing about Sanchez' books is this: I had, in the back of my mind, been wondering what book or books I might recommend to remove the sting of recent events. And in the middle of reading The God Box, I realized that this book in my hands fit the profile, and the reason I hadn't thought about it was because I'd been thinking of Sanchez as that dude who writes those books about gay teenage boys. The Mexican-American part of it was thoroughly incorporated, but it wasn't separate and special and a Thing.* It just was. And that's exactly what I'm looking for, pretty much.

*[Well, it's a little bit of a thing; the books include a mini-glossary of Spanish not defined in the course of the text, and the Spanish is defined in the course of the text a lot more often than I suspect would be the case if they were being marketed to a Latino audience. But it's not that annoying.]

<ETC: I originally said the Rainbow Boys trilogy was all white, but brak666 reminded me that one of the boys was identified as Latino. I'm pretty sure that means Mexican-American, considering that something like 90% of his Latino characters are Mexican-American. (He's had a couple of secondary or tertiary characters who were Latino with origins somewhere else.)

I don't think I can stress enough how much I should not be handling money, in the sense of having to calculate and pay royalties. I have had one offer of a business assistant, which is a step in the right direction. And I've been trying to think of how I could create a store where I didn't actually have to handle money that didn't look like a scam.( whacky business plan )

But an Amazon affiliate store type website I can set up now soon. We can start collecting links to fanfiction to serve as the basis of an Archive of Our Own Collection now. I can start reaching out to other projects in this vein -- off the top of my head? ibarw, People of Color Carnival, 50books_poc, maybe even the Carl Brandon Society -- now.

Is there any interest in working on those parts while I think some more about how to handle the publishing? Also ... the reason I have not created a livejournal community for this is because I am planning to leave livejournal for DreamWidth once it opens. Can we keep planning via posts in my LJ tagged chromatic realities (you should be able to subscribe) or should I get a mailing list or something?

( Why so business-like? )

So, I asked a couple of electronic publishers what it would take to start an electronic press. In conclusion, I might just about be able to handle a zine. But, join me in my dreamy wave vision, where I write up the ( About Us Page for Chromatic Realities Press )

That was more difficult than I expected, actually. I'm not one hundred per cent satisfied, but ... I've sort of promised myself that from now on, every post about white people has to be balanced by a post about us or some fanfiction. Also, I needed something to wash the … conversational dead ends out of my mouth.

( Read more... )